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Civitas President to EPA: Step in Where Cooper Has Failed

RALEIGH – This week, Civitas President Col. Francis De Luca sent a letter, along with a petition, to the administrator Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), urging them to take action in the Cape Fear River area to clean up the water supply polluted by GenX and ignored by state officials.

The action requested by De Luca on behalf of the Civitas Center for Law and Freedom has been used previously in the case of discharges of similar compounds by DuPont Chemical Company in West Virginia as well as in Flint, Michigan.

To date, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ), under the direction of Governor Roy Cooper and Secretary Michael Regan, has, without explanation, taken no action to stop the discharge. This administration has been aware of the potential endangerment for months and, despite having the broad legal and regulatory powers to do so, has not required Chemours to stop this discharge.

Civitas President Col. Francis De Luca said, “There is clear evidence of a cover up by Chemours and state officials, who previously said concentrations of GenX posed little health risk. And now that the risk has indeed been proven, the Cooper administration (Governor Cooper being the state’s previous Attorney General) has yet to secure an injunction to stop the discharge, even temporarily. Similarly, the NCDEQ has not used any of its broad state statutory authority to enforce the current National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit under the Clean Water Act. And there has been no proposed revision to the current NPDES permit that would limit or prevent the discharge of these potentially harmful pollutants.”

De Luca continued, “If regulations are going to exist, they must be enforced in an equal and equitable manner. We are not seeing that happen in this case and as a result, people’s health and safety may be put at risk. A basic purpose in having a department of environmental quality is to have clean drinking water for all North Carolinians.”